Grieving Stages a Rape Victim Goes Through

Rape is a traumatic, life-altering experience, and the process of healing is different for each victim.

There is no prescribed way a rape victim should feel, and there are no specific benchmarks for overcoming the complex feelings that can arise after the emotional and physical abuse of a sexual assault. The unfortunate reality of rape is that it can touch the lives of young and old, male and female, and people from all backgrounds and in all stages of life. It is likely that each rape victim will deal with the aftermath from his or her own unique perspective, because of different life experiences, coping skills, and support systems.

However, as with many traumatic life experiences, there are common stages that many rape victims will pass through on the road to recovery.In her groundbreaking 1969 book On Death and Dying, Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss-born psychologist, wrote about the stages that dying people tend to go through as they approach their impending mortality. Her stages have been widely accepted by the grief community as a common framework and language; in addition, they encourage sensitivity and understanding during each stage of the grieving process.

While not everyone will experience each of these stages after rape, or in this particular order, Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief may offer a rape victim some clarity on the emotional process of recovering from a rape experience. Here are the five stages of grieving, as interpreted for rape victims:

Denial
After experiencing sexual assault, there’s such total confusion and disbelief that a person often goes numb; the mind-body system has to shut down. It is also common for a survivor to deny that what happened was rape or to downplay it by perhaps believing "it wasn't so bad." A common form of denial is such that the victim accepts that an assault occurred but avoids recognizing that it was of a sexual nature.

Anger
The second stage of grieving a sexual assault is anger. A victim's anger is directed not only at the perpetrator but also many times at herself. Since we live in a society that tends to blame the victim, especially a rape victim who knew her attacker, the victim may become angry at herself for dressing a certain way, putting herself in a certain situation, or even having a drink. Of course, this anger is misplaced and wrong-headed, and there is nothing a victim can do that can make her ‘deserve’ to get raped.

Bargaining
Bargaining follows as the third stage of grieving following a rape. The victim’s objective is to minimize the emotional trauma. Often, the bargaining is of a spiritual nature: The victim will make a deal with a higher power, asking for the pain to go away in return for certain prescribed behavior.

Depression
The fourth stage of grieving over rape is often depression. The reality of the sexual assault settles in at this juncture, as does an overriding sense of hopelessness and shame.

Acceptance
Finally, at stage five of the rape-grieving process, the victim gains some sense of acceptance. At this juncture, the victim is able to begin to restore a sense of normality to her life. For many victims, letting go is often unnerving because they have invested so much into simply surviving that they might feel like being a survivor is the only thing that defines them. But at this stage, the victims have incorporated what happened into their lives: It is not the definition of who they are; it is just a part of who they are. They’ll likely think about what happened a lot less and feel more like a stronger version of their "old selves."

Too often people assume that time heals all wounds, but this is simply not true when it comes to sexual abuse. The healing process is complicated and can involve emotional twists and turns.

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